<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux-toradex.git/drivers/firmware/efi/Kconfig, branch master</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel for Apalis and Colibri modules</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>efi: Explain OVMF acronym in OVMF_DEBUG_LOG help text</title>
<updated>2025-08-29T17:02:04+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Geert Uytterhoeven</name>
<email>geert+renesas@glider.be</email>
</author>
<published>2025-08-12T13:54:29+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=05e75ac35ee9e38f96bbfebf1830ec2cace2e7f8'/>
<id>05e75ac35ee9e38f96bbfebf1830ec2cace2e7f8</id>
<content type='text'>
People not very intimate with EFI may not know the meaning of the OVMF
acronym.  Write it in full, to help users with making good decisions
when configuring their kernels.

Fixes: f393a761763c5427 ("efi: add ovmf debug log driver")
Signed-off-by: Geert Uytterhoeven &lt;geert+renesas@glider.be&gt;
Reviewed-by: Richard Lyu &lt;richard.lyu@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
People not very intimate with EFI may not know the meaning of the OVMF
acronym.  Write it in full, to help users with making good decisions
when configuring their kernels.

Fixes: f393a761763c5427 ("efi: add ovmf debug log driver")
Signed-off-by: Geert Uytterhoeven &lt;geert+renesas@glider.be&gt;
Reviewed-by: Richard Lyu &lt;richard.lyu@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge tag 'efi-next-for-v6.17' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/efi/efi</title>
<updated>2025-08-09T15:10:01+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2025-08-09T15:10:01+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=402e262d77cd8b075a56809e30e6903ef648ad1a'/>
<id>402e262d77cd8b075a56809e30e6903ef648ad1a</id>
<content type='text'>
Pull EFI updates from Ard Biesheuvel:

 - Expose the OVMF firmware debug log via sysfs

 - Lower the default log level for the EFI stub to avoid corrupting any
   splash screens with unimportant diagnostic output

* tag 'efi-next-for-v6.17' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/efi/efi:
  efi: add API doc entry for ovmf_debug_log
  efistub: Lower default log level
  efi: add ovmf debug log driver
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Pull EFI updates from Ard Biesheuvel:

 - Expose the OVMF firmware debug log via sysfs

 - Lower the default log level for the EFI stub to avoid corrupting any
   splash screens with unimportant diagnostic output

* tag 'efi-next-for-v6.17' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/efi/efi:
  efi: add API doc entry for ovmf_debug_log
  efistub: Lower default log level
  efi: add ovmf debug log driver
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi: add ovmf debug log driver</title>
<updated>2025-07-09T10:31:38+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Gerd Hoffmann</name>
<email>kraxel@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2025-07-08T12:56:23+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=f393a761763c542761abcf978252d431269366d6'/>
<id>f393a761763c542761abcf978252d431269366d6</id>
<content type='text'>
Recent OVMF versions (edk2-stable202508 + newer) can write their debug
log to a memory buffer.  This driver exposes the log content via sysfs
(/sys/firmware/efi/ovmf_debug_log).

Signed-off-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Recent OVMF versions (edk2-stable202508 + newer) can write their debug
log to a memory buffer.  This driver exposes the log content via sysfs
(/sys/firmware/efi/ovmf_debug_log).

Signed-off-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86/efi: Implement support for embedding SBAT data for x86</title>
<updated>2025-06-21T11:53:44+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Vitaly Kuznetsov</name>
<email>vkuznets@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2025-06-03T09:19:51+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=61b57d35396a4b4bcca9944644b24fc6015976b5'/>
<id>61b57d35396a4b4bcca9944644b24fc6015976b5</id>
<content type='text'>
Similar to zboot architectures, implement support for embedding SBAT data
for x86. Put '.sbat' section in between '.data' and '.text' as the former
also covers '.bss' and '.pgtable' and thus must be the last one in the
file.

Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov &lt;vkuznets@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) &lt;bp@alien8.de&gt;
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250603091951.57775-1-vkuznets@redhat.com
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Similar to zboot architectures, implement support for embedding SBAT data
for x86. Put '.sbat' section in between '.data' and '.text' as the former
also covers '.bss' and '.pgtable' and thus must be the last one in the
file.

Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov &lt;vkuznets@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) &lt;bp@alien8.de&gt;
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20250603091951.57775-1-vkuznets@redhat.com
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi: zboot specific mechanism for embedding SBAT section</title>
<updated>2025-05-21T13:31:42+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Vitaly Kuznetsov</name>
<email>vkuznets@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2025-05-13T12:58:07+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=0f9a1739dd0e1ca3942e51dc3ec18f0d68c23be5'/>
<id>0f9a1739dd0e1ca3942e51dc3ec18f0d68c23be5</id>
<content type='text'>
SBAT is a mechanism which improves SecureBoot revocations of UEFI binaries
by introducing a generation-based technique. Compromised or vulnerable UEFI
binaries can be prevented from booting by bumping the minimal required
generation for the specific component in the bootloader. More information
on the SBAT can be obtained here:

https://github.com/rhboot/shim/blob/main/SBAT.md

Upstream Linux kernel does not currently participate in any way in SBAT as
there's no existing policy in how SBAT generation number should be
defined. Keep the status quo and provide a mechanism for distro vendors and
anyone else who signs their kernel for SecureBoot to include their own SBAT
data. This leaves the decision on the policy to the vendor. Basically, each
distro implementing SecureBoot today, will have an option to inject their
own SBAT data during kernel build and before it gets signed by their
SecureBoot CA. Different distro do not need to agree on the common SBAT
component names or generation numbers as each distro ships its own 'shim'
with their own 'vendor_cert'/'vendor_db'

Implement support for embedding SBAT data for architectures using
zboot (arm64, loongarch, riscv). Put '.sbat' section in between '.data' and
'.text' as the former also covers '.bss' and thus must be the last one.

Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov &lt;vkuznets@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
SBAT is a mechanism which improves SecureBoot revocations of UEFI binaries
by introducing a generation-based technique. Compromised or vulnerable UEFI
binaries can be prevented from booting by bumping the minimal required
generation for the specific component in the bootloader. More information
on the SBAT can be obtained here:

https://github.com/rhboot/shim/blob/main/SBAT.md

Upstream Linux kernel does not currently participate in any way in SBAT as
there's no existing policy in how SBAT generation number should be
defined. Keep the status quo and provide a mechanism for distro vendors and
anyone else who signs their kernel for SecureBoot to include their own SBAT
data. This leaves the decision on the policy to the vendor. Basically, each
distro implementing SecureBoot today, will have an option to inject their
own SBAT data during kernel build and before it gets signed by their
SecureBoot CA. Different distro do not need to agree on the common SBAT
component names or generation numbers as each distro ships its own 'shim'
with their own 'vendor_cert'/'vendor_db'

Implement support for embedding SBAT data for architectures using
zboot (arm64, loongarch, riscv). Put '.sbat' section in between '.data' and
'.text' as the former also covers '.bss' and thus must be the last one.

Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Vitaly Kuznetsov &lt;vkuznets@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi/zboot: Limit compression options to GZIP and ZSTD</title>
<updated>2024-12-06T15:59:56+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ard Biesheuvel</name>
<email>ardb@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2024-12-06T10:41:40+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=0b2c29fb68f8bf3e87a9d88404aa6fdd486223e5'/>
<id>0b2c29fb68f8bf3e87a9d88404aa6fdd486223e5</id>
<content type='text'>
For historical reasons, the legacy decompressor code on various
architectures supports 7 different compression types for the compressed
kernel image.

EFI zboot is not a compression library museum, and so the options can be
limited to what is likely to be useful in practice:

- GZIP is tried and tested, and is still one of the fastest at
  decompression time, although the compression ratio is not very high;
  moreover, Fedora is already shipping EFI zboot kernels for arm64 that
  use GZIP, and QEMU implements direct support for it when booting a
  kernel without firmware loaded;

- ZSTD has a very high compression ratio (although not the highest), and
  is almost as fast as GZIP at decompression time.

Reducing the number of options makes it less of a hassle for other
consumers of the EFI zboot format (such as QEMU today, and kexec in the
future) to support it transparently without having to carry 7 different
decompression libraries.

Acked-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
For historical reasons, the legacy decompressor code on various
architectures supports 7 different compression types for the compressed
kernel image.

EFI zboot is not a compression library museum, and so the options can be
limited to what is likely to be useful in practice:

- GZIP is tried and tested, and is still one of the fastest at
  decompression time, although the compression ratio is not very high;
  moreover, Fedora is already shipping EFI zboot kernels for arm64 that
  use GZIP, and QEMU implements direct support for it when booting a
  kernel without firmware loaded;

- ZSTD has a very high compression ratio (although not the highest), and
  is almost as fast as GZIP at decompression time.

Reducing the number of options makes it less of a hassle for other
consumers of the EFI zboot format (such as QEMU today, and kexec in the
future) to support it transparently without having to carry 7 different
decompression libraries.

Acked-by: Gerd Hoffmann &lt;kraxel@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi/zboot: Fix outdated comment about using LoadImage/StartImage</title>
<updated>2024-11-15T09:40:51+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ard Biesheuvel</name>
<email>ardb@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2024-10-13T11:09:09+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=6fce6e9791685e95b70144a414eb90132e497489'/>
<id>6fce6e9791685e95b70144a414eb90132e497489</id>
<content type='text'>
EFI zboot no longer uses LoadImage/StartImage, but subsumes the arch
code to load and start the bare metal image directly. Fix the Kconfig
description accordingly.

Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
EFI zboot no longer uses LoadImage/StartImage, but subsumes the arch
code to load and start the bare metal image directly. Fix the Kconfig
description accordingly.

Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi: Add tee-based EFI variable driver</title>
<updated>2023-12-11T10:19:18+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Masahisa Kojima</name>
<email>masahisa.kojima@linaro.org</email>
</author>
<published>2023-11-07T05:40:54+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=c44b6be62e8dd4ee0a308c36a70620613e6fc55f'/>
<id>c44b6be62e8dd4ee0a308c36a70620613e6fc55f</id>
<content type='text'>
When the flash is not owned by the non-secure world, accessing the EFI
variables is straight-forward and done via EFI Runtime Variable
Services.  In this case, critical variables for system integrity and
security are normally stored in the dedicated secure storage and can
only be manipulated directly from the secure world.

Usually, small embedded devices don't have the special dedicated secure
storage. The eMMC device with an RPMB partition is becoming more common,
and we can use this RPMB partition to store the EFI Variables.

The eMMC device is typically owned by the non-secure world (Linux in our
case). There is an existing solution utilizing eMMC RPMB partition for
EFI Variables, it is implemented by interacting with TEE (OP-TEE in this
case), StandaloneMM (as EFI Variable Service Pseudo TA), eMMC driver and
tee-supplicant. The last piece is the tee-based variable access driver
to interact with TEE and StandaloneMM.

So let's add the kernel functions needed.

This feature is implemented as a kernel module.  StMM PTA has
TA_FLAG_DEVICE_ENUM_SUPP flag when registered to OP-TEE so that this
tee_stmm_efi module is probed after tee-supplicant starts, since
"SetVariable" EFI Runtime Variable Service requires to interact with
tee-supplicant.

Acked-by: Sumit Garg &lt;sumit.garg@linaro.org&gt;
Co-developed-by: Ilias Apalodimas &lt;ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ilias Apalodimas &lt;ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Masahisa Kojima &lt;masahisa.kojima@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
When the flash is not owned by the non-secure world, accessing the EFI
variables is straight-forward and done via EFI Runtime Variable
Services.  In this case, critical variables for system integrity and
security are normally stored in the dedicated secure storage and can
only be manipulated directly from the secure world.

Usually, small embedded devices don't have the special dedicated secure
storage. The eMMC device with an RPMB partition is becoming more common,
and we can use this RPMB partition to store the EFI Variables.

The eMMC device is typically owned by the non-secure world (Linux in our
case). There is an existing solution utilizing eMMC RPMB partition for
EFI Variables, it is implemented by interacting with TEE (OP-TEE in this
case), StandaloneMM (as EFI Variable Service Pseudo TA), eMMC driver and
tee-supplicant. The last piece is the tee-based variable access driver
to interact with TEE and StandaloneMM.

So let's add the kernel functions needed.

This feature is implemented as a kernel module.  StMM PTA has
TA_FLAG_DEVICE_ENUM_SUPP flag when registered to OP-TEE so that this
tee_stmm_efi module is probed after tee-supplicant starts, since
"SetVariable" EFI Runtime Variable Service requires to interact with
tee-supplicant.

Acked-by: Sumit Garg &lt;sumit.garg@linaro.org&gt;
Co-developed-by: Ilias Apalodimas &lt;ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ilias Apalodimas &lt;ilias.apalodimas@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Masahisa Kojima &lt;masahisa.kojima@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>arch: Remove Itanium (IA-64) architecture</title>
<updated>2023-09-11T08:13:17+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ard Biesheuvel</name>
<email>ardb@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2022-10-20T13:54:33+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=cf8e8658100d4eae80ce9b21f7a81cb024dd5057'/>
<id>cf8e8658100d4eae80ce9b21f7a81cb024dd5057</id>
<content type='text'>
The Itanium architecture is obsolete, and an informal survey [0] reveals
that any residual use of Itanium hardware in production is mostly HP-UX
or OpenVMS based. The use of Linux on Itanium appears to be limited to
enthusiasts that occasionally boot a fresh Linux kernel to see whether
things are still working as intended, and perhaps to churn out some
distro packages that are rarely used in practice.

None of the original companies behind Itanium still produce or support
any hardware or software for the architecture, and it is listed as
'Orphaned' in the MAINTAINERS file, as apparently, none of the engineers
that contributed on behalf of those companies (nor anyone else, for that
matter) have been willing to support or maintain the architecture
upstream or even be responsible for applying the odd fix. The Intel
firmware team removed all IA-64 support from the Tianocore/EDK2
reference implementation of EFI in 2018. (Itanium is the original
architecture for which EFI was developed, and the way Linux supports it
deviates significantly from other architectures.) Some distros, such as
Debian and Gentoo, still maintain [unofficial] ia64 ports, but many have
dropped support years ago.

While the argument is being made [1] that there is a 'for the common
good' angle to being able to build and run existing projects such as the
Grid Community Toolkit [2] on Itanium for interoperability testing, the
fact remains that none of those projects are known to be deployed on
Linux/ia64, and very few people actually have access to such a system in
the first place. Even if there were ways imaginable in which Linux/ia64
could be put to good use today, what matters is whether anyone is
actually doing that, and this does not appear to be the case.

There are no emulators widely available, and so boot testing Itanium is
generally infeasible for ordinary contributors. GCC still supports IA-64
but its compile farm [3] no longer has any IA-64 machines. GLIBC would
like to get rid of IA-64 [4] too because it would permit some overdue
code cleanups. In summary, the benefits to the ecosystem of having IA-64
be part of it are mostly theoretical, whereas the maintenance overhead
of keeping it supported is real.

So let's rip off the band aid, and remove the IA-64 arch code entirely.
This follows the timeline proposed by the Debian/ia64 maintainer [5],
which removes support in a controlled manner, leaving IA-64 in a known
good state in the most recent LTS release. Other projects will follow
once the kernel support is removed.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAMj1kXFCMh_578jniKpUtx_j8ByHnt=s7S+yQ+vGbKt9ud7+kQ@mail.gmail.com/
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/0075883c-7c51-00f5-2c2d-5119c1820410@web.de/
[2] https://gridcf.org/gct-docs/latest/index.html
[3] https://cfarm.tetaneutral.net/machines/list/
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/all/87bkiilpc4.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de/
[5] https://lore.kernel.org/all/ff58a3e76e5102c94bb5946d99187b358def688a.camel@physik.fu-berlin.de/

Acked-by: Tony Luck &lt;tony.luck@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The Itanium architecture is obsolete, and an informal survey [0] reveals
that any residual use of Itanium hardware in production is mostly HP-UX
or OpenVMS based. The use of Linux on Itanium appears to be limited to
enthusiasts that occasionally boot a fresh Linux kernel to see whether
things are still working as intended, and perhaps to churn out some
distro packages that are rarely used in practice.

None of the original companies behind Itanium still produce or support
any hardware or software for the architecture, and it is listed as
'Orphaned' in the MAINTAINERS file, as apparently, none of the engineers
that contributed on behalf of those companies (nor anyone else, for that
matter) have been willing to support or maintain the architecture
upstream or even be responsible for applying the odd fix. The Intel
firmware team removed all IA-64 support from the Tianocore/EDK2
reference implementation of EFI in 2018. (Itanium is the original
architecture for which EFI was developed, and the way Linux supports it
deviates significantly from other architectures.) Some distros, such as
Debian and Gentoo, still maintain [unofficial] ia64 ports, but many have
dropped support years ago.

While the argument is being made [1] that there is a 'for the common
good' angle to being able to build and run existing projects such as the
Grid Community Toolkit [2] on Itanium for interoperability testing, the
fact remains that none of those projects are known to be deployed on
Linux/ia64, and very few people actually have access to such a system in
the first place. Even if there were ways imaginable in which Linux/ia64
could be put to good use today, what matters is whether anyone is
actually doing that, and this does not appear to be the case.

There are no emulators widely available, and so boot testing Itanium is
generally infeasible for ordinary contributors. GCC still supports IA-64
but its compile farm [3] no longer has any IA-64 machines. GLIBC would
like to get rid of IA-64 [4] too because it would permit some overdue
code cleanups. In summary, the benefits to the ecosystem of having IA-64
be part of it are mostly theoretical, whereas the maintenance overhead
of keeping it supported is real.

So let's rip off the band aid, and remove the IA-64 arch code entirely.
This follows the timeline proposed by the Debian/ia64 maintainer [5],
which removes support in a controlled manner, leaving IA-64 in a known
good state in the most recent LTS release. Other projects will follow
once the kernel support is removed.

[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAMj1kXFCMh_578jniKpUtx_j8ByHnt=s7S+yQ+vGbKt9ud7+kQ@mail.gmail.com/
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/0075883c-7c51-00f5-2c2d-5119c1820410@web.de/
[2] https://gridcf.org/gct-docs/latest/index.html
[3] https://cfarm.tetaneutral.net/machines/list/
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/all/87bkiilpc4.fsf@mid.deneb.enyo.de/
[5] https://lore.kernel.org/all/ff58a3e76e5102c94bb5946d99187b358def688a.camel@physik.fu-berlin.de/

Acked-by: Tony Luck &lt;tony.luck@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>efi/libstub: Implement support for unaccepted memory</title>
<updated>2023-06-06T14:58:23+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Kirill A. Shutemov</name>
<email>kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2023-06-06T14:26:31+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.toradex.cn/cgit/linux-toradex.git/commit/?id=745e3ed85f71a6382a239b03d9278a8025f2beae'/>
<id>745e3ed85f71a6382a239b03d9278a8025f2beae</id>
<content type='text'>
UEFI Specification version 2.9 introduces the concept of memory
acceptance: Some Virtual Machine platforms, such as Intel TDX or AMD
SEV-SNP, requiring memory to be accepted before it can be used by the
guest. Accepting happens via a protocol specific for the Virtual
Machine platform.

Accepting memory is costly and it makes VMM allocate memory for the
accepted guest physical address range. It's better to postpone memory
acceptance until memory is needed. It lowers boot time and reduces
memory overhead.

The kernel needs to know what memory has been accepted. Firmware
communicates this information via memory map: a new memory type --
EFI_UNACCEPTED_MEMORY -- indicates such memory.

Range-based tracking works fine for firmware, but it gets bulky for
the kernel: e820 (or whatever the arch uses) has to be modified on every
page acceptance. It leads to table fragmentation and there's a limited
number of entries in the e820 table.

Another option is to mark such memory as usable in e820 and track if the
range has been accepted in a bitmap. One bit in the bitmap represents a
naturally aligned power-2-sized region of address space -- unit.

For x86, unit size is 2MiB: 4k of the bitmap is enough to track 64GiB or
physical address space.

In the worst-case scenario -- a huge hole in the middle of the
address space -- It needs 256MiB to handle 4PiB of the address
space.

Any unaccepted memory that is not aligned to unit_size gets accepted
upfront.

The bitmap is allocated and constructed in the EFI stub and passed down
to the kernel via EFI configuration table. allocate_e820() allocates the
bitmap if unaccepted memory is present, according to the size of
unaccepted region.

Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) &lt;bp@alien8.de&gt;
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230606142637.5171-4-kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
UEFI Specification version 2.9 introduces the concept of memory
acceptance: Some Virtual Machine platforms, such as Intel TDX or AMD
SEV-SNP, requiring memory to be accepted before it can be used by the
guest. Accepting happens via a protocol specific for the Virtual
Machine platform.

Accepting memory is costly and it makes VMM allocate memory for the
accepted guest physical address range. It's better to postpone memory
acceptance until memory is needed. It lowers boot time and reduces
memory overhead.

The kernel needs to know what memory has been accepted. Firmware
communicates this information via memory map: a new memory type --
EFI_UNACCEPTED_MEMORY -- indicates such memory.

Range-based tracking works fine for firmware, but it gets bulky for
the kernel: e820 (or whatever the arch uses) has to be modified on every
page acceptance. It leads to table fragmentation and there's a limited
number of entries in the e820 table.

Another option is to mark such memory as usable in e820 and track if the
range has been accepted in a bitmap. One bit in the bitmap represents a
naturally aligned power-2-sized region of address space -- unit.

For x86, unit size is 2MiB: 4k of the bitmap is enough to track 64GiB or
physical address space.

In the worst-case scenario -- a huge hole in the middle of the
address space -- It needs 256MiB to handle 4PiB of the address
space.

Any unaccepted memory that is not aligned to unit_size gets accepted
upfront.

The bitmap is allocated and constructed in the EFI stub and passed down
to the kernel via EFI configuration table. allocate_e820() allocates the
bitmap if unaccepted memory is present, according to the size of
unaccepted region.

Signed-off-by: Kirill A. Shutemov &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov (AMD) &lt;bp@alien8.de&gt;
Reviewed-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ardb@kernel.org&gt;
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230606142637.5171-4-kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
